Although some of the larger publishers have yet to catch on, much of the gaming industry seems be gravitating toward better, more nuanced method of dealing with copyright piracy, as demonstrated by one company's placement of their latest release on The Pirate Bay rather than on Steam.
Leaving aside the AAA publishers for a moment, the video game industry is actually starting to get really good on recognizing better ways to react to copyright infringement other than pounding their fists on their tables and knee-capping their customers with DRM. This still occurs, of course, but we've also seen stories of publishers treating pirates as potential customers with whom it's worth connecting, giving away Steam keys on torrent sites, or just playfully messing with pirates instead of screaming at them. These efforts generally are done to the tune of great PR and the humanization of a content company that can only help their businesses.
On torrent site The Pirate Bay, typically the domain of illegal rips of media, one username among dozens uploading the horror game Darkwood stands out: the game’s publisher. Today, the Poland-based Acid Wizard Studio uploaded their own game for free with “no catch, no added pirate hats for characters,” their torrent description reads.
Now, why Acid Wizard Studio did this is somewhat unique in these kinds of stories. In part, the studio says it did this because it doesn't want to keep the game from those who truly cannot afford it. It aimed this message particularly at children who game at the pleasure of their parents' credit card bills. But while we've seen that sort of thing done before, the studio also did this because it believes the Steam key reselling business is the greater evil compared with piracy.
Acid Wizard saw a comment from someone who refunded the game because they didn’t want their parents to get stressed out over the bill, Acid Wizard writes on Imgur.
“If you don’t have the money and want to play the game,” they say, “we have a safe torrent on the Pirate Bay of the latest version of Darkwood.” They explain that a flood of emails asking for free Steam keys helped bolster their decision to upload a free Darkwood torrent to The Pirate Bay, and asked that those who can afford it later buy it discounted on Steam. It’s an interesting move that spits in the face of shady key-selling services like G2A, where Acid Wizard figures a lot of the free keys they’d send out would go. “This practice makes it impossible for us to do any giveaways or send keys to people who actually don’t have the money to play Darkwood,” Acid Wizard writes. “Please, don’t buy it through any key reselling site. By doing that, you’re just feeding the cancer that is leeching off this industry.”
The replies to the studio's message were almost universally positive, with many promising to try the game out via the torrent and buy it afterwards if they liked it. How many of those people ever would have tried the game out at all, illicitly or otherwise, is impossible to determine, but it seems obvious that the amount of additional sales revenue that will be generated because of this is not zero. In other words, the publisher gets the good PR of treating people well, gets to make a point about a key-reselling industry that is genuinely pretty scummy, and picks up some indeterminate number of sales in the process.
That's the kind of nimble response to piracy the AAA publishers should recognize as a winning strategy.
Mortgage rates today are driven by movements in financial markets worldwide. When the economy heats up, bond price drop, and rates increase. When the economy pulls back, interest rates tend to fall.
from Mortgage Rates, Mortgage News and Strategy : The Mortgage Reports http://ift.tt/2ev4d07
What determines the your mortgage rate when you buy or refinance a home? The lender's pipeline (amount of business it has) is one factor. But one that you may be able to ignore.
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Once you've been playing shows for awhile and have begun to see some real success and interest form your audience, it's time to consider stepping it up and moving to the next level. Here we look at some ways in which you can transform your good live show into something great.
You and your band have been playing out for a year or so, and you’ve started to get great responses from your audiences. Now, it’s time to take your show to the next level and maybe even start playing nationally! Get ready for that next step by transforming your live show, and go from being a band people like to watch to the band people drag their friends to see.
Transitions: Keep the Show Moving
You want your set to have momentum. If you just played a killer uptempo song that got everyone moving, don’t kill the energy in the room by pausing for 15 seconds before the next song. Even if you’re a more mellow artist, you risk taking the audience out of the moment by interrupting the flow of your set. In other words, don’t give people an excuse to go to the bar to chat with their friends.
Here are some important points to consider:
Keep Stage Banter to a Minimum
A personal touch is nice, but people came to hear you play your music. Even if the audience agrees with your politics, they probably don’t want to hear a five-minute speech about how gentrification is killing the neighborhood.
Match the Keys
Songs in the same, or similar, keys will sound good transitioning into one another. You can refer the the circle of fifths to find similar keys.
Keep it Simple
Don’t be afraid to keep your transitions really simple. You can write all new intricate parts that modulate and bend the tempo to perfectly go from song to song, or you can also just end a song and start the next one before the audience stops clapping.
Don’t Play the Tuning Song
Every guitar player, and everyone who’s ever been in a band with a guitar player, knows what a guitar sounds like when it’s being tuned. The audience doesn’t want to hear you tune your guitar, but guitars inevitably go out of tune during a show. So how can you tune without stopping the show between songs?
Know the parts in the set where there’s no guitar for a bit, and then use either a tuning pedal or a clip-on tuner to tune silently.
+ Learn more on Soundfly: Leave standard behind, and explore alternate guitar tunings with Soundfly’s new series of bite-sized courses, Alternate Tunings for the Creative Guitarist!
Honor the Audience’s Time
There are a hundred things every person in the audience could be doing tonight, but they’re here watching you. Be worth every second of their time. Make sure you acknowledge their presence, too.
Lighting: Set the Mood
You don’t have to have a multi-million dollar lighting setup to make an impact. A simple survey of the venue and its lights will give you a few options for what to do. Lighting is very important to how the audience perceives you. You can make a stronger emotional impression when the lights match the tone of the music. Watch some live videos of your favorite bands, and see how they use lights to set the mood.
Room Lights
Look around the venue and see what lights are kept on during the music. You may want more or fewer lights on while you play, so just talk to the sound person or manager. A lot of groups won’t even think to ask, but never be afraid to politely ask the staff to accommodate you so you can put on the best show possible.
Lighting Scenes
Many venues will have a lighting rig that lets you set multiple scenes with preset combinations of the lights that someone can switch between with a simple press of a button. Talk to the sound person during soundcheck and see what they can do. If you have a friend interested in lighting, ask the venue if they can come along and do lighting for you.
Basic DIY Lighting
You can bring some lights to set up when you play your set. This might be particularly useful for house shows and DIY spaces. These include, but are not limited to, clamp lights, Christmas lights, portable LED lights, laser projectors, etc.
Calling the sound person “your greatest weapon” is only slightly hyperbolic. If your band is tight, getting the sound person to make sure you sound good is probably the next major hurdle for your band. If you’ve only been playing for six months to a year, you’ll be playing all sorts of venues with all sorts of sound people. Some will be great, some will be dicks, but it’s your responsibility to communicate what you need from the sound guy or gal.
What Do I Say?
You might not know what to say besides, “Make us sound good” — and for a lot of sound guys, that might be enough. When you get someone who’s pressing you for more information, think about what instruments are carrying the lead melody (the melody you’d hum or sing). Most of the time, it’ll be vocals, so you’ll want those on top or loudest in the mix.
Will you be playing lead or soloing on the guitar, or will you be mostly playing rhythm?
Do any instruments have a left and right input (stereo), or is everything going out in mono?
Know Your Backline
Always know what backline the venue has available. Most venues will send you a detailed list of everything they have; others will have it listed on their website. Always double check.
Gear gets broken, stolen, and misplaced. Websites and form letters aren’t changed nearly as often as things go missing or break. Also, be mindful of what your sound needs. If you’re playing some jazz-fusion guitar, a Marshall Stack might not give you the sound you really need. Spend some time thinking about shaping your sound.
Go and check out the drum kit. Drums, by definition, get beat up and venues often won’t replace them until they’re six months past dead.
Be Nice to the Sound Person
People can be petty, and you don’t want your mic to “mysteriously” cut out in the middle of your set. Pleases and thank yous all around… or else.
Setlist: It’s More Than Just Song A to B to C…
Your setlist is your map to stardom, your battle plan. A good setlist has certain hallmarks and follows certain rules (suggestions) but also needs room to be a little flexible. Here are some basic principles to help guide you.
Where to Put Which Song
You should put your strongest songs at the beginning and end of your set. They’ll set the tone and be what people most remember. It goes without saying, but you want to leave a good impression and make sure your audience remembers you. Also, this helps you catch people who are there to see the bands before and after you. Many bands try to plan a thematic arc to their show, which can work out very well, but simply bookending your set with strong material is the easiest way to structure a setlist.
Stay Flexible
Things will not always go according to plan. It’s good to have a couple of covers in your back pocket in case you feel like you’re losing the audience. If the band before you just played a really high-energy set, you might want to have a few of your more ripping songs ready to go right away.
Read the audience and respond accordingly.
Is Every Song Worthy?
Does every song in your set absolutely have to be there? Make sure if you’re going to play a song, it will make the overall experience for the audience better. You can often make a stronger impact playing fewer songs. Make sure the songs you’re playing suit the venue; often, a small shift in song choice can realign you with the space if you feel yourself drifting away from the audience.
These are some of the best suggestions I can impart, but as with every suggestion, they’re highly subjective. The only hard-and-fast rules of creating better and better live shows over time are simply to just keep playing, keep learning, keep asking questions, and keep helping others around you.
A new YouTube Red feature gives users greater control of the content they wish to access on the platform, including allowing them to save video and more for offline access, which is good news for both consumers as well as artists and labels.
An exciting new development for YouTube Red now offers users more control over what music and videos they play, and when. YouTube Music now allows you to select songs to play offline, which means that you can take your favorites with you on trains, airplanes, the great outdoors and anywhere else without a reliable Wi-Fi connection. For artists and labels, this means more opportunities for your content to be played and greater potential payoff from marketing and natural momentum.
YouTube Red has been around for one to two years now, depending on the territory. There are a number of draws for the service including ad-free streaming, the ability to continue playing videos in the background while using other apps after locking the screen and exclusive video content in the form of YouTube Red Originals. Additionally, YouTube Music, which is included with YouTube Red, allows subscribers to listen to YouTube’s large and unique archive of music offline.
Until now, this service was limited to an algorithmically created playlist based on the user’s watch history. Plenty of users have likely found great music through their personalized playlist, but YouTube Red now offers an extra element of control: users can save specific albums, playlists, and even individual songs for offline listening. Listeners can also choose between high-definition video, standard-definition video or audio depending on how they intend to use the app.
Artists, labels and creators are no strangers to YouTube as a ubiquitous and wide-reaching platform. With this update, you’ll no longer have to rely only on YouTube’s playlist algorithms to connect with fans who utilize offline mode.
